Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda [Paperback]

Jacky Law (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 6, 2006

Last year, the pharmaceutical industry had sales in excess of $300 billion. Clearly, we all pay in one way or another — whether by buying drugs directly or through taxation. But it is less clear if we are getting value for our money.

Author Jacky Law shows how a small number of corporations have come to dominate the global healthcare agenda. She reveals a system in which the relentless pursuit of profit is crowding out the public good. Effective regulators are under intense pressure from corporate lobbies, and companies spend more money on marketing than they spend on research and development. Meanwhile, the cost of new drugs rises relentlessly, while the number of original new products declines.

All is not well with modern medicine. In what is both a diagnosis and a recommended course of treatment, Big Pharma reveals a world where market considerations, not medical need, are determining the research agenda. The author points to a future where the public and the medical profession once again have a voice in the kind of healthcare we want — and the healthcare we pay for.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The drug business is the most profitable in all of capitalism, journalist Law notes in this scattershot indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, but what do consumers get for the money shoveled into it? A dwindling stream of exorbitantly expensive new drugs, she contends, most of them "me-too" competitors, patent-prolonging reformulations of existing products or marginally effective nostrums for diffuse complaints; vast marketing budgets to cajole consumers into demanding-and doctors into prescribing-unnecessary medications; biased scientific studies and corrupted or intimidated researchers; a regulatory system lobbied and suborned into allowing unsafe and ineffective drugs on the market; and a society that automatically pops a pill for every discontent, real or imagined. Law offers a comprehensive, if disorganized, rehash of a now familiar but still timely portrait of drug companies' perfidy and greed, studded with case studies of firestorms like the Vioxx scandal and the controversy over the possibly deadly side-effects of anti-depressants. She's on shakier ground when she dilates her case into a brief against conventional medicine and in favor of a murky "holistic" regimen of "complementary"-i.e. alternative-therapies that harmonize with "the body's natural intelligence" and exploit the "untapped healing power" of the placebo effect. Law's flirtations with fringe conceits weaken an otherwise serviceable science-based critique of the drug industry.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* British journalist Law deconstructs the relationship between Big Pharma, on one hand, and medical professionals and patients, on the other, and declares it unhealthy for everybody, though not financially for a handful of major international pharmaceutical companies. How can it be healthy when those companies' annual marketing budgets outstrip the annual budgets of all of the medical schools in the U.S. combined? How can it be healthy when those companies pick and choose which clinical tests of new drugs will be made public? How can it be healthy when the regulating agencies in charge of protecting public health interests are inexorably tied to the pharmaceutical industry? On the other hand, who other than those with ties to pharmaceutical companies can decipher the science-speak of all their reports? And who is to speak for the everyman seeking relief from the pain of everything from real illness to aging? Law's conclusion won't be popular, since she lays the burden on doctors to advocate for their patients, often at the expense of Big Pharma. And while it is some comfort to know that the U.S. isn't alone in its health care woes, it is still darn little comfort. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; 1 edition (February 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786717831
• ISBN-13: 978-0786717835
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,261,004 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Honey of a Book - It could save your life, March 3, 2006

By 

Barry Brooks (london) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Paperback)

Big Pharma Review - Jacky Law


What's the difference between good journalism and honey? Not a lot. Both run smooth, hit the spot when it comes to taste; and both as they have no bitter aftertaste leave you wanting for nothing but more.

Big Pharma - a revelation of a book - is written with skill and concision. With the right facts supporting the most telling of arguments that just keep on coming. Over 250 pages of paragraph after illuminating paragraph making it a honey of a read. What Jacky Law has to report could have been just an eye-opener for the inside few, but her riveting, forceful and fair-minded telling of it, makes it a true `must-read' for us all.

The author has taken her twenty five years experience of reporting on the planet's pill makers, added some of her own smart investigative insights, to lead us effortlessly, and with great purpose into the heart of this previously hidden industry. The white-coated world of the pharmaceutical giants is revealed in all its grubby majesty.

No doubt about it, the figures - the mighty ever-escalating billions - show us that Big Pharma is one of the most dominant and influential of the corporate kings that this century or any other period has ever known.

Her book is a wakeup call that we ignore at our peril. A dossier of well-researched facts and arguments carefully and clearly presented. Her intention isn't to shock, more to enlighten. But because of the depth of the book's inquiry and the scale of what is uncovered shock it does.

Medicine, as we all know, is quiet literally a matter of life and death. Which one of us isn't a hostage to our health? So we think, or at least I did, that the industry, which supplies the doctors and systems that we so rely on are as ethical as the lifesavers themselves. Maybe not perfect but a working approximation of the Good Guy. If not saints then certainly not sinners. But forget any notion of the Hippocratic oath, money as these pages show doesn't just talk, in Big Pharma it swears.

Drug development is exposed as being little different from any other new product programme. Profitability isn't simply an outcome of success it's prerequisite. The efforts, half lies and chicanery of the multi national are often enough to make a snake oil salesman blush. If a treatment can be left to commonsense or priced up to smack of high science then it's no contest. The end user, the patient, you and I, are no more or less than a market to be maximised.

Of course there have been improvements. Medicine naturally is best as an investment when it works to cure or alleviate. So it's not all smoke and mirrors. The bottom line always looks better when pills are efficient, when drugs deliver. There's no doubt about it, the pharmaceutical giants have changed our expectations and experience of health and sickness.

There has been the introduction of some truly remarkable concoctions and life saving remedies. Breakthrough after breakthrough brings us better and better medicine. But progress in profits has been even more remarkable.

See how much value dealing with the sick and dying can generate. See how tricky, ruthless and rapacious Big Pharma can be. Arm yourself with information. Start making the medicine business accountable to the people it serves not the bank balances it generates.

A chapter a day starting now may not make you feel better, but it will give you a healthier understanding of what's really happening in the big, big world of Pharma.

But be warned it will leave an aftertaste. And it won't be sweet.

Barry Brooks

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Scam, September 24, 2007

By 

Book & Music Lover (Louisville, Kentucky USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Paperback)

Here is yet another in a long line of books written to expose the dirty dealings going on between the FDA, and "Big Pharma." Supposed new drugs which are only replications of existing drugs from another company. Because I want to get my feet wet as well, because there is money to be made. Then there are the continual TV, Radio, and Print Media ads which continues to echo in ears and minds of targeted consumers. This Medication or that which do nothing but provide a crutch if you may. Negative side effects played down by both "Big Pharma," and the FDA equally, stating "the benefits far out weigh the risks." Yes of course unless you are one of the victims who happened to become seriously ill, or died.

The co-habitation between the FDA, and "Big Pharma" just to keep "Big Pharma" in business. And let us not forget the attempts at "Tort Reform." This is nonsense yet the Government allows this to continue, and there are millions of victims, and few of us are even speaking up, or asking questions. Note "Autism." Ever ask yourself why the Amish People have no Autism amoung their populus? There is that risk factor again, raising it's ugly head.

Then there is the new push to make the world comply with rules that disallow anyone to speak about "Natural Cures," via WTO. At the same time trying to limit the common citizen's ability to purchase what is commonly known as "Dietary Supplements." You know according to the FDA, "Only a drug, can cure, treat, or prevent a disease." To speak otherwise is to bring the weight of the law down on ones head. If I were to say the cure for scurvy, is citrus fruit, or that cherries are a natural anti-inflammatory agent. Oh well I have just broken the law.

Read this book get an understanding for yourself as to how this ruse cost the American tax payer, and purchasers of Healthcare Insurance needless billions. One of the biggest reasons for healthcare being so costly. That and the prophiteers involved in healthcare.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exposes a big headache which needs fixing, May 21, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Paperback)

Corporate wealth and public health often are at odds with one another: that's the view presented in BIG PHARMA: EXPOSING THE GLBOAL HEALTHCARE AGENDA. Modern healthcare is in shambled, and Jacky Law shows how a relatively small number of companies dominate the research agenda and pursue profits to the detriment of public health and health systems as a whole. From the influences of corporate lobbyists to market considerations which rule over medical needs, BIG PHARMA exposes a big headache which needs fixing.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch